Don’t take our comic jokes personal – comedians tell politicians amid election campaign

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Comedians all over the world have sometimes hit on politicians with their creative piece of work which on some occasions do not go down well with some of these politicians and the situation in Ghana is not different. However, the comedians in the country are pleading with politicians not to take their comic lines as personal attacks.

The country heads to the polls on December 7, 2020. These few months to election period is usually characterized by heightened political tension and the creative arts industry have always had its fair share of the brouhaha as sector players always come under intense criticism for supporting one politician or the other.

Photo: DKB

Against this backdrop, comedians in the country are sending a notification to the politicians especially the two major political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and their party sympathizers to desist from dragging their comic performances and creative pieces into the political terrain as whatever they will be putting out around this season will be for comic purposes and not to entrench support for any politician.

Comedianwaris, a stand-up comedian and actor, in an interview with the B&FT stated that it is getting to elections and he expects everyone not to take comedians too personal because no matter what happens comedians need to make jokes and if one finds himself in the web, he should just embrace it and move on without getting angry.

“Comedy is supposed to be for fun and not to provoke if things go against you in a joke, it does not mean that is the reality, and that is why it is a joke. Some people, especially politicians during campaign era take things too personal that they react to the creative piece trying to discredit it and that is a serious limitation on comedy,” he said.

Derick Kobina Bonney, popularly known as DKB, on his part, also indicated that politicians should not take comic jokes very personal because the jokes only make fan of the situation and also highlights their shortfalls or areas they need to give more attention.

“My best advice to politicians is that they should rather learn from what we say because we analyze the joke from both sides and usually touch on the weaknesses and strength which they can improve upon. If they listen to us very well, they can figure out somethings to use against the opponent because we ridicule the opponent and also ridicule them so it is more or less a free consultation,” he said.

He further described a scenario during the previous election 2016, where he personally created a joke that made ridiculed the NDC for only saying “JM Toaso” without adding options of things done to compliment it, and after his joke, the party went ahead to improve upon their message with what he said.

DKB, however, sent a strong word of advice to his colleagues in the comedy industry to desist from endorsing political parties. “the more neutral you stay, the better your jokes,” he concluded.

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